


Ashes & Iron

by Gryphonrhi



Series: Lares & Penates [3]
Category: Forever Knight
Genre: Gen, NIghtcrawler (Forever Knight setting), Soliloquy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-12
Updated: 2010-01-12
Packaged: 2017-10-06 05:21:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/50093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gryphonrhi/pseuds/Gryphonrhi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I saw the crescent moon tangled in tree branches tonight, and when I looked again it was the curve of an arm in the bitter cold not yet replaced by spring.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ashes & Iron

**Author's Note:**

> Based off prompts from devohoneybee: _ash, iron, conclave, covenant, melee, an image of moonlit branches_

I saw the crescent moon tangled in tree branches tonight, and when I looked again it was the curve of an arm in the bitter cold not yet replaced by spring. White as ash wood in the night, stripped and peeled and drained of life. Not just dead, gentle listeners, but dead and shorn of name and clothes both.

Do I shock you? I assure you, I did not shock the police dispatcher.

We live in a city. That is what policeman means, after all -- man of the polis, man of the city. Politics is the art of living in a city, with your fellow citizens. A conclave of men, huddled together to save themselves from the dark and those things that lurk in the dark. Not just the knife of stone or bronze or iron, but the chill that descends with the dark, the outer fall in temperature that accompanies the inner drop of your heart from chest to stomach.

Man has gone from hiding in caves to building them... and still hiding in them. Covenants, the old legal agreements that today can dictate such matters as who shovels the snow from the walks and who inherits the store... Covenant is from convene. To come together. So is coven.

You have banded together in this bedlam of noise, of people above you, below you, to the left and to the right, in this melee of humming noise... and the dangers have banded in among you. The madwomen with their poisons of food and word, the madmen with their daggers of steel or inaction, the tormenting children with their taunts and shoves and 'we were only playing,' the beast in human form who's only recognizable through his empty, pitiless eyes... do they sound familiar, gentle listener?

You have come together out of fear and you have let that which you fear in among you.

And so on nights like this, the bodies tangle in the trees, line the streets like so much refuse. But are they truly thrown away... or are they the predators' wake as they stalk through the hunting ground you built as your refuge?

There was a time and place, once, where patrons gave food and coin to those who were theirs, and those who were not theirs found other patrons -- or fended for themselves. And yet, the patrons' responsibilities were limited. To demesnes, domains, domus... the house. Not this foolishness of responsibility to an entire city, where the responsibilities are so wide that no one set of shoulders may hold them and so no one heart's worth of blood may be called to account.

So wide, and so widely drawn, that there are gaps. And in those gaps, the predators swim, and the weak fall victim.

Much more comforting a thought, is it not? That the system has failed? It gives you the hope that there is a system, and that it can be improved and fixed until such things do not happen.

And yet the man remains still, and dead, and in the unsurprised care of the police.

And, when we come to this, as your ancestors came together in the cities -- it wasn't the system you recognized, was it, gentle listener? It was the beasts.

I imagine that the dispatcher with whom I spoke would recognize them, too.

Pale as ash wood, and ashes in the street to give traction on the ice. Iron blood on your lips from the cold, and iron in their hands as they give you cold you may not return. Melee of noise around you, and melee of men you don't always know also around you, and some of them, gentle listeners, are beasts.

And when you encounter them... sometimes, so are you, are you not?

Good night, gentle listener.

If you are gentle.


End file.
